Things That Got Lost In The Dark
by lachambre11
Summary: "I'm going to kiss you in about a minute. This is the first and last time I'll ever do it, because I know…I know that you don't feel the same way as I do. And if you don't want me to, you have to say it now, Teddy. Just say it now" - Victoire/Teddy/Lily


**Things that got lost in the dark**

"_Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.  
>These, our bodies, possessed by light<br>Tell me we'll never get used to it."_

Scheherazade – Richard Siken

**X.x.X.x.X.x**

"You are living here?" Teddy asked her, taking in the whole place – dingy, filled with dust and cobwebs and smelling somewhat like cat piss. "Somehow, I can't see that happening."

But Lily just cocked an eyebrow and smiled softly at him, before saying –

"You wait and see, Teddy. A couple hands of paint, several hours of scrubbing and dusting and this will turn out more like a home than that flat of yours."

He snorted, seriously doubting that she could pull of that sort of miracle. And yes, maybe the place he was living didn't felt like home, but home for him was anywhere where Victoire used to be, and nowadays he could only be described as a destitute.

But somehow, Lily turned out to be right. Two weeks, several body aches, leg cramps and throbbing hands later, her new flat was a haven painted with soft lilac walls and scattered with pictures of her family and friends, flowing white curtains on its large windows, a plush electric blue couch that they'd bought second-handed from a Muggle thrift shop, and the scent of berries lingering around its rooms.

She gave him a key and smiled that knowing smile of hers before going into the kitchen and pouring them a new bland of coffee she swore he just had to taste before making up his mind about the beverage.

It didn't seem to matter that he didn't liked coffee.

It didn't seem to matter that he had a flat of his own.

She just had a gift for finding things that were lacking in his life and doing her best to make up for the absence of them, even if he didn't wanted her to do it in the first place.

She just smiled at him, and he was a goner.

**X.x.X.x.X.x**

He doesn't even know when this thing between them started, really.

But Victoire had just left him, and Lily had just left her job, and somehow they became this… unit. She would tell him when he was being a whiny, self-absorbed wanker, and he would tell her when she was being an unrealistic, impulsive twit.

It wasn't normal, or even likely, not with her being a twenty-one years old unemployed Healer who left her program a couple a months before finishing her training, and he being a thirty years-old divorced Potions Master with too much time on his hands a tendency to overwater his plants.

No, it didn't made sense at all, but they were drifting, and then they just started to drift together, and a friendship started to blossom between two people who had absolutely nothing in common except for the fact that he sort of, but not really, belonged to her family.

It didn't made sense, but she made him laugh with her outlandish ideas about life, and he… He didn't really know what he added to the little arrangement they had going on, but she seemed to like having him around, rolling his eyes at her antics.

Six months in, he was more used to spending time at her place that the couch on her living room was also commonly known as his bed. She kept complaining about finding his books lying everywhere, even behind the closet that she used to keep cleaning products, and he was so used to get her groceries that she didn't even bothered to pretend she would eventually go out and buy them anymore.

Then one day she just looked at him from across the table – they were having porridge and sharing tidbits about the Sunday's Prophet – and just stared.

"What?" he asked, kind of curious, but not really paying attention.

"You should move," she said after a couple of minutes.

"Move where?" he inquired, turning the page. He was reading a really engrossing article about the Goblin situation in New Zealand, and her cousin Lucy had written it, so he sort of had to pay attention to it anyway.

"Move here," and her tone held a tiny bit of irritation. Because, clearly, to her, where else could he move?

There was nothing dignified about choking on orange juice.

"Excuse me?" he managed to force out after a five-minute coughing fit.

"It's not as if you don't spend every waking minute here anyway," she pointed out, shrugging her shoulders. "At least you would get to sleep on a decent bed, and I would get someone to split the bills, because Merlin knows I'm running out of money as it is."

He just sat there gaping like a fish.

"We could expand my office with a couple of house-keeping spells, and voilà! It's not like I'm using the space to work anyway, seeing as I'm a waitress at the moment. And it shouldn't count as a office when it's mostly used as storage place for my shoes collection."

Then she shot him a triumphant smile, daring him to prove her wrong.

He sighed, and decided that, really, some of the things she'd said as much sense as the fact that it was a tad idiotic paying rent on a flat he barely stayed at anymore.

But one of them had to be sensible about this.

"And what would we do about your shoes if I move in?"

"I'll just keep them in the oven, I guess," she suggested. "That way they'll be very warm, and I'll actually be able to sit on my couch every once in a while."

So this was how her flat turned into "theirs", and how he ended up learning that Lily not only liked to shower at odds times during the night, but she also sung very, very loudly, while doing it as well, but she'd such a soft, dream-like quality to her singing voice that it kind of lulled him to sleep – not that he would ever admit to that.

**X.x.X.x.X.x**

It was the morning of their third wedding anniversary, and Victoire had just sent him and Owl, asking if he could meet up with her somewhere to talk things out.

"Don't do anything stupid," Lily warned him while sipping on some Guatemalan coffee.

"I don't do stupid things."

"Not usually. But when it comes to Victoire, it's a whole other story," and she gave him a hard, levelling stare that scared him a little bit. "Just remember she was the one who called it quits, Teddy. Just remember she wasn't willing to meet you halfway, and how you felt when she just walked away when things got hard for you two."

He swallows hard, and _yeah_, it's not like he could forget that, ever.

But it was so difficult and tiring to stay angry with someone like Victoire, the person he'd shared so much of first, the person who had been there for the biggest parts of his life.

So he'd agreed to see her.

He should've known better by now to listen to Lily.

**X.x.X.x.X.x**

"You look good," she said, and tentatively reached for his hands from across the table. The places where her fingertips touched his skin tingled, and she gave him a sweet smile that he knew very well - a smile that spoke of mornings in beds and lazy kisses late at night.

He shivered and pulled away.

"Don't be like that," she pleaded, her eyes shinning with something he couldn't quite pinpoint.

"It's just… what is the point of us meeting, Vic? Today, of all days? You've had months to contact me, almost an year, and you chose to do it now?"

"It's just that – I think I've made a mistake, Ted, letting us go."

"You should've figured that out sooner," he says, but it comes out with less bite than he intends it to. His resolve is already weakening, and she can sense that.

So she moves in for the kill.

"I miss you, you know," and she shoots that smiled again that, god, just turn his insides to mush. Still. "Come back home, darling. Please."

And for all his life, that's all he's ever wanted – to have a home to come back to.

Maybe his was supposed to be with Victoire.

**X.x.X.x.X.x**

"You're making a mistake," Lily tells him for what it feels like the hundred time in the past week since he'd told he and Victoire were trying again. "She'll only break your heart."

"God, will you _just_–"

"Just what Teddy? Stop? Stop being your friend? Stop caring about you? Stop whishing you were so damn stubborn and blind?" She sighed and ran a hand through her short, auburn hair, making it stick into every possible direction. "I swear she's your fatal flaw or something. I love my cousin, I do, but I can see her clearly in ways that seems impossible for you to do. She's lovely, yes, and she might've loved you, but she loves herself _more. _She takes you for granted, and she's so used to getting what she wants, for you to gives her what she wants, that scared her when you weren't willing to back down before."

"So she thinks that now that you've got a taste of what was like living without her, you might be willing to relent. Just don't do it, Teddy. Don't give in to her."

"She's my wife, Lily!" He shouts, not being able to hear her says all those awful things anymore. "She's my wife, and I love her; I've loved her for years. I don't think you can possibly understand what it means, to feel this strongly about someone."

"Yeah, I possibly couldn't, right?" And she looks so bitter right now, so defeated, that it hurts to look at her right now. So he looks away. "I hope you don't regret this, Teddy. And I really hope you'll be happy this time, because you sure as hell wasn't before."

She closes the door to what used to be his room and pads quietly down to her bedroom, her retreating footsteps echoing so faintly on the wooden floors that it feels like this whole talk was just a figment of his imagination, and she had never been there in the first place.

But her words are etched into his brain, and it doesn't matter how many times he tries to forget the entire conversation, the raw look on her eyes when he'd told she had never loved someone like he loved Victoire, well, that still haunted him.

**X.x.X.x.X.x**

He and Victoire – they were a mess the second time around.

There were good days – days when he made her giggle with his off-kilter comments about the world events, or the days when he slipped his hands underneath her skirt and turned her breathless, or even the days when she looked at him sleepily from beneath her hair as if she couldn't believe her luck and he had to kissed her yawns away…

But then there were the days when things were bad, really, really bad.

The days when they yelled at each other from across the room, her eyes folded across her chest, her face red with anger. The days when she ended up crying, and he just budged and gave her what she wanted. The days when he resented the fact he was always the one who compromised when they should've been figuring things out together.

The days when she just plainly ignored him, and the silence rung so loud in his ears that it nearly drove him deaf. There were the days when she didn't wanted to talk, the days when she just shut down and pushed him away, the days when she seemed so distant that they might as well be living in different continents.

He had no idea what was happening to her, to them, but he was starting to wonder if maybe, as much as they loved each other, they didn't really fit together, not anymore, not as seamlessly and perfectly as they used to when they were younger.

It didn't help matters that he missed spending time with Lily so much as well, that he missed her easy smile, her cutting wit, and they way she liked to poke her head into his room and just blather on about her day and her ever-changing plans.

He missed her countless career changes that he couldn't quite keep up with, and her out of the blue suggestions – why not put some chamomile in his potion, Teddy? Why won't we go visit Iceland this weekend, I heard it's really beautiful?

He even missed hearing her sing some old Celestine Warbeck tunes in the middle of the night while he shifted around in bed, his thoughts wandering from the new things potions he was thinking of concocting, to the books he was trying to trick her into reading, to the way that she'd looked at that small silver earrings with an endless spiral that she'd found on the last time they end window-shopping at the Diagon Alley.

Even though he had never thought he would see the day, he kind of missed always having to try out a new flavour of coffee whenever Lily decided it was time to switch things up.

Living with Lily had been challenging at times, but also fun and liberating in ways he'd never gotten to experience before. They were barely out of school when things with Victoire turned so serious so fast, and he had never gotten the chance to be just Teddy and not half of a couple, _Teddy-and-Victoire_, like he'd been for over ten years.

He loved Victoire, but he had gotten so good at living without her in the months they were separated that he barely missed her anymore on the days that they felt so disconnected.

And the worst part was that he didn't even felt like wanting to reach out.

On the bad days, it was like living with a ghost, and they moved around each other carefully, as if any word would break them, a mockery of the couple they used to be.

**X.x.X.x.X.x**

Lily invited him to a poetry slash recital thing she'd organized for her newest job at a Muggle bookshop, and he decided to attend. He was in desperate need of some night away from the stiffing atmosphere of the place he used to call it home an year and a half ago, so he bundled up, wrote Victoire a note and left before she got home from The Ministry.

He knew he'd made the right decision when Lily positively beamed once she spotted him standing there on the sidewalk in front of her workplace, in the middle of a cold, November night, a couple of lilacs on his hands and his hair morphed purple just for the evening.

"Hi, stranger," she half-hugged him, lacing their fingers together like she'd used to do it all the time when they'd lived together. It felt natural, and it was one of the things he missed from those days with her, even if her hands were cold like tiny bits of icicles. "I like your hair, you know. You should morph it and use it like this more often."

"Do you think purple is my colour then?"

"Not really, but you look so ridiculous it's kind of cute," Lily blurted out. She promptly blushed and looked away before adding, after a couple of minutes, "I'm glad you came."

"Al and his girlfriend Lizzie said they might drop by later, but Jamie refused to leave Cecilia's side since she might pop those nieces of mine at any given moment," Lily added.

"What about Harry and Ginny?"

"Dad said it's boys night, or something equally disturbing like that. And Mum actually just left, she says she's got a deadline at work but wanted to drop by and wish me luck."

"You're blessed," he pointed out, trying but failing to hide that tiny bit of envy that always seemed to sneak its way into his voice whenever he's talking about someone's parents.

"I know," she admitted, not sounding arrogant at all, just a little bit saddened. She squeezed his hand, and the smile she shot his way told him she understood what he'd meant, and how it affected him. "They could've judged me for abandoning my Healer training a couple of months before finishing it, but they decided to be supportive while I figure out what I want instead. There aren't a lot of people who get parents like that."

He nodded, trying to get past the lump on his throat.

"Yours would've been wonderful too, you know."

"Yeah," he finally managed to say, whispering. "They would have."

When they got inside the bookshop, nearly all the chairs she'd put out were filled (he knew she'd picked them by the delicate purple lace that decorated the cushions), but she managed to find him a place on the third row, between a fifty-something executive type and a raven-haired woman with abundant cleavage and a gigantic yellow handbag.

Lily waved him off and left to stand by the stage. Her smile seemed to have a life of its own, never leaving her face, but he knew better, knew that by the way she kept tucking her hair behind her ears, the way she kept rubbing her hands together, that she was extremely nervous, nearly jumping out of her own skin.

By the time the sixth poet left the stand, she got up the stage and reached for the microphone. It seemed natural, the way the spotlight agreed with the tone of her skin, the way it made her eyes shine, and she let out a nervous little laugh before speaking.

"Hi, I'm Lily. Potter, that is. Lily Potter. Some of you might know me as the girl who keeps pressuring you into to buying some questionable books of obscure poetry, and some of you might know me as the klutz who keeps stubbing her toe on the Romantics section and using some, well, _colourful _words."

"But what I think that most of you don't know is that I write on occasion. Even though I'm not especially good at it, my boss sort of gave me an ultimatum last week – I would either stand here tonight or be forever demoted to the graveyard shift. And I'm sorry for what I'm about to do, but we all know how Glen feels about working nights, so there we go –"

She cleared her throat and with one last sheepish look on Teddy's direction, her tremulous voice reverberated through the store. Everyone who'd laughed at her words before now fell silent with a sudden hush, enraptured by the fragile look of uncertainty on Lily's heart-shaped face, mismatched by the determination that shone deep within her hazel eyes.

And her words were like vinegar and honey – two things that weren't supposed to get along, but oh, how they did, how they complimented each other and an addictive quality to it, leaving only a bittersweet aftertaste in its wake and a memory of surrender.

Her words were beautiful, and they spoke of being seen right through, of never getting quite right, of fumbling through what it feels like a pointless exercise of loving and losing, of feeling herself slip unnoticed through the cracks.

She spoke all of those words, with her honeyed voice growing more louder and confident by the second while she entranced with her tale about the loudest sound of all, love spoken, and how excruciating it was to love a deaf man, to feel like a mute woman for it.

She spoke all of those things and her eyes never left his. Teddy was at her mercy, hanging to her every word, and he felt so dizzy that he knew he had forgotten how to breathe.

She finished her poem with a desperate, hollow laugh, tears on her eyes, and the crowd loved it, loved her, their loud claps drowning out the quickening beats of Teddy's heart.

He left the bookshop when everyone stoop up and clapped for by Lily, thanking her for her words, because he _knew,_he just knew there was no going back for them.

There was no place to hide this knowledge anymore, no ignorance he could claim to have.

She loved him, and he loved someone else.

It was as simple as that.

It was a complicated as it could ever be.

**X.x.X.x.X.x**

She found him shuffling his feet, trying to keeping himself from freezing to death, on the same street corner he had been standing a mere hour ago, back when things were comfortable, and he was the stupid (blind, deaf) one who kept refusing to acknowledge what was right in front of his face until she'd slapped him with the truth of it.

And yes, maybe he should've left without saying goodbye, but he couldn't bring himself to do this to her, not after she'd laid out her heart with every word she'd spoken.

"Well then, now you know," she said, exhaling loudly, as if somehow his reaction was disappointing to her. But he was so tired, so tired of being a disappointment to everyone (to his Grandmother, because he couldn't replace her lost daughter, or even to Victoire, because he wasn't the man she thought she'd married anymore).

"Why did you –" but even he had no idea what it was that he wanted to be asking right now. Why hadn't she told him sooner? Why had she told him now? Why him out of all people, on the first place?

"I'm not sorry," and she jutted her chin out defiantly. "I'm not sorry at all."

And she just took three decisive steps in his direction, invading his personal space, and stared right into his eyes before saying –

"I am going to kiss you in about a minute." He swallowed, hard. "This is the first and last time that I'll ever do it, Teddy, because I _know…_I know that you don't feel the same way about me. And if you don't want me to do it, you have to say it now, Teddy."

"_Just_ s_ay it now_."

He stayed silent.

Later he would think that his reasoning behind it was that her words made it seem like that he'd put her through hell, and he figured that he at least owned her that one kiss.

(But deep down, he knew that maybe it was because he had been curious, that he'd wanted her to kiss him just so that he could, could've finally know, what Lily tasted like)

She cupped his face with her hands, her eyes going a bit wide and her pupils blown out, the tip of her pink tongue reaching out to moist her lips. She had that green scarf he'd gotten for her birthday wrapped tightly around her neck, and she was wearing a blood-red coat that clashed horribly with her scarf, the freckles that were scattered around her pale face, the tips of hair curled from the cold wind.

When their lips touched, nothing really happened.

He was just standing there, feeling uncomfortable, letting himself be kissed by a hesitant Lily, and chanting _wrong wrong wrong, all wrong_over and over again inside his head. Then something unexpected happened. She let out this bone-weary, frustrated sigh and pushed herself even closer; finally kissing him like she meant it, with everything she had.

The chant interrupted itself mid-sentence, and just he stopped thinking altogether.

When they broke apart, there was a numbness spreading through the parts where his skin wasn't touching hers, and he noticed faintly that it had started to snow while they were kissing, the first snow of the year, but he'd been so wrapped up on the way she felt against him, the way her nose had kind of banged against him in a way that made them both laugh, or how good she smelled, or how his chest felt like it was _exploding_.

They looked up at the same time, almost as if they had planned to do it, and the snowflakes that clung to her eyelashes transfixed him, made him want to reach out and touch them, see if they would melt at the contact. She looked at the snow and he looked at her, finally seeing her for the first time, realizing she was beautiful, and so alive.

When she had looked at him again, her hands were still cupping his face, while his had a mind of their own, curling possessively around her waist. He stared his hands, trying to figure out how they had ended up there on the first place, failing miserably to remember.

Lily just gave him this saddened half-smile, almost an apology, and tried to move away.

But he involuntarily clung to her, drew her back in, brought her close to his arms again, and he couldn't help but reach out for her this time. There was nothing chaste or shy about the way she moaned against his lips, and a different chant altogether broke through the fog that was his Lily-consumed brain, a chant that went something like this –

_What I'm going to do now, what I'm going to do now, what I'm going to do now?_

_**X.x.X.x.X.x**_

He woke up next to Victoire, and he'd never felt guiltier in his lifetime.

She looked so peaceful, lying there, that it felt shameful for him to look at her any longer, not while he tried to muster up enough reasons to justify his behavior with Lily on the past night, or how to explain it to her what happened, but… there he couldn't make sense out of it himself, couldn't even begin to wrap around his mind around it.

The fact was that Lily had kissed him, and he had let her, simply because he'd wanted to.

There was no way around this, and he had to be honest with Victoire simply because there was no other way, because he didn't even wanted to, didn't even had the energy to lie. And he knew, he knew she was going to hate him, that his whole life would turn upside down, but there was no one to blame for the fallout but him.

Well, maybe he could blame Lily, a little.

Nevertheless, the truth of the matter was that she'd given him a choice – though it wasn't much of one, not when she was standing right there looking so fucking sincere, not when the she'd stared at him in a way that made him feel things he'd never felt before, not even with Victoire. But Lily asked him to choose between yes and no, and he'd said nothing.

He had said nothing, and he still couldn't bring himself to regret it.

**X.x.X.x.X.x**

The second time that Victoire walk out hurts him nearly as much as the first time she's done it, and it doesn't help, knowing that he was the one that was responsible for this one.

Teddy moves out, and instead of getting a new flat, he gets a room at the Leaky Cauldron.

He stays there for two weeks and goes through the motions – making potions, writing dossiers about his progress on Wolfsbane, forcing himself to eat, sleep, to be productive.

He ignores every well-intentioned letter he's received from his friends as well as every knock on the door of his room form Harry, Ginny, and even his grandmother.

There are only two people he wants to see, really, but he has no idea what he would even say to them, or how to begin to apologize for the damage he's done.

Then one night he's standing in front of the mirror, shaving, and he just _snaps_. He presses the razor so hard against his cheek that it bleeds, but he doesn't feel the pain, or sting of the blade – he feels nothing. There's only the acrid smell of blood and his eyes flashing a stormy shade of _greygreygrey_ before the mirror, half insane and half dead.

He's fed up, has had enough of being this pathetic, so he packs all of belongings and leaves out only five changes of clothes, his toothbrush, three of his favourite pieces of literature and his Potions journal.

He makes sure his things are safely delivered to his Grandmother's house once he's gone, and then he leaves right before dawn, just a week and a half before Christmas.

The ground is covered in snow, and it reminds of Lily, of her pinks lips, her cold hands, and of the way her body quivered with emotion when he'd splayed his fingers on the back of her waist, under her coat and her shirt, and found out she had dimples there.

He crushes the snow with his shoes and walks away as fast as he can. He doesn't think, don't look back – just Apparates and watches the sunrise on another part of the world.

It feels good, knowing that he can leave everything behind.

It feels good, knowing that he at least has some semblance of control of his life.

**X.x.X.x.X.x**

A month goes by, and it doesn't make him feel any less guilty. If it's possible, he's only lonely, feeling silly and lazy for taking the easy way out instead of staying and fighting.

But for what? Or more specifically, for whom?

He starts to question himself, wondering if maybe he's made the right decision, leaving like this, without a goodbye. Then he thinks of the way Victoire looked at him when he'd told her about Lily, and he just picks another city, another country, other languages, faces and sights to get lost into so he doesn't have to think about them, doesn't have to feel.

That way maybe, just maybe, he can outrun his mistakes.

**X.x.X.x.X.x**

He's wrong again – his actions eventually catch up with him.

It happens when he's drinking a pint of the best Belgian beer he could find, sitting at a pub located at the smallest town he'd even been to, counting Ottery St. Catchpole, and he drops enough of his drink down his new shirt that he considers it definitely ruined.

He has no idea how she's managed to find him like this, but he can't help but feel a tiny bit of relief for not having to pretend anymore when he still remember all the reasons he'd left on the first place, and how he'd wrecked things so completely.

Victoire's divorce papers feel every bit as much as a punch in the solar plexus could feel, and it knocks his breath out because he loves her still, doesn't think he'll ever stop loving her, even though he's starting to wrap his mind around the fact that maybe, sometimes, you're just not meant to marry your first love.

But what really does him in is that there's a note attached to it, a note that says –

_I love you, but I don't think I'll ever be able to forgive you._

He signs the papers and Owl them back to her, then he gets so pissed out of his mind that night that he wakes up shirtless and without his shoes in the middle of the town square.

By now it's routine, to packs his bags and carry on, and that's exactly what he does.

**X.x.X.x.X.x**

Spring arrives when he's in Istanbul, and with it, a letter from Lily.

"_Teddy,_

_I don't think I've enough inspired words to begin this letter in a way that's less awkward for us. It's ironic, really, because words were the thing the put us in this awful situation in the first place, so one would think that I could've manage just fine, right?_

_So, okay, maybe I'm deflecting. How are you? I try really hard not to care about that, seeing as you just left the country without as much as a goodbye note, but I guess I understand why you've done in the first place. I probably would've done the same thing, had I been the one put into your position. We're more alike than you realize, you know._

_Have you been to a lot of places? _

_I've always dreamed about the two of us dancing under the shadow of the Acropolis in Athens, or cannonballing into the Baltic ocean. I've dreamed of us doing all those things together, but I'm thinking you've already done all of this and probably even more, so I guess I'm as jealous of you as I'm sort of angry you never even gave me a chance._

_In the imaginary version of this soul-searching trip you're having, the one I play it out in my head whenever I miss you too much, you're always visiting the places I've wanted to meet, Teddy. You're seeing them, and you're thinking of me, and you're wondering when you can home again. It's selfish, and foolish, and I'm possibly wrong, but you know, it's not like you have written to tell me about it, or even sent me a postcard._

_But you can come home, you know? Maybe it's not your fantasy home, or even not the one you want to come back to, but the flat it's still the same – the walls are still painted purple, the couch hasn't been touched or sit on since you were last here, and I might even agree to quit enabling your coffee addiction if you stop trying to get me to adopt a cat._

_I guess what I'm saying is that it's okay that you left, really, but I just want you to come back, in whatever capacity you want to – as flatmates? Friends? More? _

_It's entirely up to you. _

_I'll wait, Teddy. I'll wait for you. Even if you don't want me to, I'll still wait._

_Love, Lily"_

_**X.x.X.x.X.x**_

He sends her a postcard of the Acropolis.

He spends two days trying to figure out what to write on the back of the damned thing, and it drives up the wall, but Lily had always been the one with all the words, and he'd always been the one trying to keep up with her. So he struggles with it, first of all because he's not entirely sure what he even wants to tell her, if it's flatmates, friends or more; and second of all because he doesn't think it's fair to send her a blank postcard either.

He knows he's not in love with her, not yet, but he thinks he could be, that he's getting to a place where it doesn't hurt anymore to think about Victoire, a place where he could let himself fall for Lily. Whenever he thinks of her, something inside him just aches with her absence, longs to hear her laugh, to feel her weirdly cold fingers entwined with his.

He hadn't missed someone like this in a long time.

So he puts some actual thought on the postcard, because he doesn't think it's fair to write her all of that – he doesn't think he might be able to make sense out of it on paper, anyway, but when his last day in Athens arrives, the words sort of comes to him –

_I hope we get that dance_

And it might not be enough, it might not be the 'I love you' she might have been hoping for, but it's about as much of a future as he can bring himself to consider – he and Lily being there in Athens, someday, dancing together under the shadow of the Acropolis.

As flatmates, friends, or more, Teddy is sure they'll figure out as they go along.

(Though lately, he's been leaning towards _more_)

**X.x.X.x.X.x**

**A.N:**Would you look at that - an update! AND a non-depressing ending to a Teddy/Lily story. It must be some kind of miracle or something. Please review if you've read. It's not beta-ed (as you can probably tell), but it just came to me this Sunday and demanded to be finished, something I haven't felt about a story or chapter in months. Tiny victory dance? I think so.


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